LITERARY DOCUMENT

In 1951 Jack Kerouac sat down at a typewriter in a friend's New York apartment and for three weeks wrote a breathless account about hitchhiking across America. It might be said that Kerouac performed On the Road rather than typing it: The text of the single-spaced manuscript flows from a rigid left margin to an undulating right margin, there are no paragraph breaks or indented sentences, and the entire novel was composed on a scroll just short of 120 feet long. His feat can be seen as an act of endurance art, even if he chose the scroll (Kerouac actually referred to it as a "roll manuscript") for reasons of economy: He didn't want to have to stop typing in order to change the paper. Since he saw the format of the scroll as a way to visually depict his narrative of the open highway, his method is interpretable as a work of art and as a literary achievement. It also demonstrates a commitment to not throw away drafts, heavily self-edit, or reshuffle the manuscript. There are pencil-mark edits in places throughout the fragile, nearly transparent, whiskey-colored paper (the exact kind is unknown) but nary a spot of Wite-Out and only an occasional "xxxxx" to blacken out a mistake. Nearly 50 years after its initial printing (it took 6 years to find a publisher), On the Road is an artifact of an America that once was, punctuated by elegies for parts that are no longer: "The air was sweet in New Orleans it seemed to come from soft bandannas; and you could smell the river and really smell the people, and mud and molasses, and every kind of tropical exhalation..." Photographs, timelines, and other materials that contextualize the story and illuminate the life and hard times of the beloved beat accompany the manuscript for On the Road, currently on view at the main branch of the public library. (Katie Kurtz)

ON THE ROAD: THE JACK KEROUAC MANUSCRIPT

San Francisco Main Library, Jewett Gallery. Through March 19. Sun., noon-4:30 p.m.; Mon. and Sat., 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Tues.-Thurs., 9 a.m.-7:30 p.m.; Fri., noon-5:30 p.m.

100 Larkin, SF. (415) 557-4277, www.sfpl.lib.ca.us